It just seems that at some parts of songs the sound gets crackly, especially when there's a female singer. I thought at first it was just because I was playing mp3s from the command line, but then the problem persisted in X...

It just seems that at some parts of songs the sound gets crackly, especially when there's a female singer. I thought at first it was just because I was playing mp3s from the command line, but then the problem persisted in X...

Hmmm...what sort of sound card do you have and what driver are you using in your kernel config?

The thing with sound under linux is; it generally either works or it doesn't. If it's working for you, then I suspect the "crackly" sounds that you refer to are either a poorly-written driver or bum speakers.

--kurt_________________The problem with political jokes is that they get elected

After some struggling, I got mine to work with ALSA. (compile sound support as a module into the kernel **not built in! ALSA doesn't work if you build it in**, disable all the modules for specific sound cardsin the kernel, emerge alsa-utils, then try "modprobe snd-card-ens1370" or "modprobe snd-card-ens1371". ALSA makes it's own modules and this will load them. If the modules load fine, follow the instructions in the desktop config guide to have them autoload each time you boot)

If you need more detailed instructions ask, I'm just not sure if this is what you need to do anyway.
The Princess

My soundblaster 16pci uses the 1371 driver as well, and I notice that listening to mp3s and CDs that if I have the master volume up over about 80% and the PCM or CD up over 80% the sound get crakly. I notice this as well on my Macintosh G4, no matter what OS i run, so I think it is just that the sound card doens't do so hot turned all the way up.
I have support for my sound as a module and alsa works fine with it, also enable oss drivers, may help out a little, but can't hurt.